Corpo, espaço e disciplina na Antiguidade Tardia: um estudo sobre o convivium com base na Saturnalia de Macróbio e na cultura material

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the rules and codes of conduct present in the late-aristocratic banquet of the fourth and fifth centuries, in the region of Italy. We understand the convivium as an important social rite during Late Antiquity, used as an instrument of reaffirmation and definition of hierarchies, power relations and identities. Such rules of conduct, which were instilled through the formation of paideia, regulated the body of the guest, molding it according to the conduct expected by the other participants. Whether or not he respected these rules, his identity could be associated with a virtuous and civilized man or an intemperate man, without politeness and without civility. To carry out this research, we used the work Saturnalia, by the writer and philosopher Macrobius, in order to identify the norms present at the banquet and the representation that the author made of the guests described in the work. We also analyzed four iconographic sources from the fourth and fifth centuries, among them mosaics, paintings, illustrations and silver plate, illustrating the Roman convivium, in order to understand how the identity of the diners was built from their representation at the banquet. In addition, in order to perceive how the physical space of the party interfered in the regulating of the body of the diner, with its hierarchies and norms, we examined the plant of the Villa del Casale, located in the region of the Piazza Armerina, in Sicily. In relation to the theoretical terms, we use the concept of representation; of body; of sociability; of space; of feast; of discipline; and of identity. Regarding the adopted methodology, we applied Laurence Bardin's Content Analysis method in reading the document